Monday, October 19, 2009

up and down

I haven't felt like writing a blog lately. For that matter, I haven't felt like writing anything. Scripts, stories, email replies, Facebook statuses, nuthin, nada. For whatever reason I've been in a really low "funk". I sometimes think the word "depression" can be misused so I'm sometimes afraid to use it.... but I guess, at the end of the day "funk" is something you hear in the score to "The Wiz" and depression is a disease.

The sucky thing about depression is very few people can wrap their minds around what that means exactly. There's a huge difference than being in a weird mood one day and feeling an emotional and physical pain in your body for days, weeks, sometimes months on end. Depression is a frustratingly mysterious problem because there really aren't any visible side effects. When Sally is depressed she doesn't limp, and she doesn't get an enormous cold soar on her lip..... but what she does get is much worse.

I first got diagnosed with depression when I was a senior in high school. The diagnosis came quick and easy like a doctor looking in your ear and saying... "Oh, you have an ear infection". At the time I was really relieved to know why I'd felt so shitty for so long but looking back I wish someone had said a little bit more, or looked a little further, or asked a couple more questions.... instead of SOLUTION: "Depression with bi-polar tendencies, and here's a prescription!"

I don't take medicine anymore but my depression or whatever it might be..... is as prevalent as ever. Little things send me spinning downward toward the abyss that I've been living in for nearly a week now. Guilt, jealousy, frustration, anger. The biggest anchor dragging me down lately is frustration, I'm waiting on some "things" to happen that are so close I can almost touch them, but the waiting is killing me.... and distracting me from getting anything else done in the interim. It's left me feeling pretty aimless and purposeless.

As my mom pointed out to me on the phone yesterday whilst in my pit of despair, "You've never dealt well with not having anything to do." And she's right. At nine years old, during a two month gap between summer theater camp and play practice for "Babes in Toyland" to start I distinctly remember a similar pit of despair, lashing out and letting myself seep down down down in sadness. The moment play practice DID finally begin I was back as if the past two months never happened, in my element, flying high, 100% swell, smiling, jumping, awake, ready.... the distinct memory of waking up and knowing, at nine years old, that I had play practice that evening at 6PM still manages to fill me with the same sort of excitement and happiness.

This weekend was a long one. Difficult and down I found it difficult to do much, and found immense guilt in the not doing much. When you're there in that space its ugly and you really cannot possibly see the light at the end of the tunnel. I sit on my sofa and stew in my frustrations and think it'll never ever end. But today, in an act of an obvious universal metaphor.... the sun is out.... play practice isn't starting at 6PM but I think I can feel the depression, the funk, or whatever its been passing and I've decided to get off my sofa.